I can't count how many times I've heard variations on "I used Anki too for a while, but I got out of the habit." No one ever sticks with Anki. In my opinion, this is because no one knows how to use it correctly. In this guide, I will lay out my method of circumventing the canonical Anki death spiral, plus much advice for avoiding memorization mistakes, increasing retention, and more, based on my five years' experience using Anki.

This guide comes in four parts, with the most important stuff in Parts I & II and more advanced tips in Parts III & IV. If you only have limited time/interest, only read Part I; it's most of the value of this guide!

Roadmap to the Guide

This guide's structure is inspired by how someone new to Anki might want to read it:

Part I contains day 1 advice for using Anki in a way that prevents the Anki death spiral. (But it is not a general intro to Anki; I leave that to other resources.)

Part II aims to save you from common mistakes, especially ones that waste effort without increasing your recall, for day 3 of using Anki.

Part III dives into more detailed card design issues, including for difficult and interrelated "information thickets", for week 3 of using Anki.

Part IV contains even more & obscure pro tips for Anki, for week 5 of using Anki.

But Anki users of all experience levels have found this guide useful by skimming & skipping between the parts that were new/interesting to them!

My Most Important Advice in Four Bullets

20 cards a day — Having too many cards and staggering review buildups is the main reason why no one ever sticks with Anki. Setting your review count to 20 daily (in deck settings) is the single most important thing you can do to stick with Anki long-term.
Atomic cards — Studying long cards is gruelling. Studying cards with 1-5 words on the back is fun. Make every card as short as humanly possible (even 1 word!) by breaking things up into many cards.
No to-be-learned information in the prompt — You're only memorizing the back of cards. Don't put any to-be-learned information on the front. If recalling the back of a card is not useful without knowing crucial info given in the prompt, the card is not useful.
Bland prompts — Make prompts as absolutely non-descript and standardized as possible. Otherwise, you will learn a dumb pattern like prompt with fancy words -> recall X, or funny typesetting ->

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